


It's Better In Berlin

by Asynca



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, set before the games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 12:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Prompt: when Lara and Sam kissed for the first time in Berlin. Set before the game.





	It's Better In Berlin

In first year university, Lara finally started coming out with me on weekends.

It was great for two reasons: one, she usually didn’t drink that much so by the time I wanted to leave she was okay to drive us home, and two, when she did drink too much she was totally hilarious. The only downside was that hooking up now took an extra level of logistics because I always had to worry about how Lara was getting home.

On one night that I did hook up, I got home the next day and Lara stopped me at the door and was like, “Guess what! You know that pub we were at last night? I was just chatting to the bartender and they were hiring! I’m closing Saturdays and Sundays from next weekend, now!”

“Another job?” I asked her, checking out my panda eyes in the hallway mirror and trying to not get too close to Lara because I could only imagine what I smelt like. “Two isn’t enough?”

She shrugged. “I could use the extra money. I just got my reading list for—”

I gave her a tired look as I interrupted her, both because I actually was tired and because it was tiring listening to her complain about money when she was a trust fund baby like me. “—Are you kidding, me, Lara? You’ve got twelve million pou—”

“I don’t have anything,” she said, looking disappointed I wasn’t completely overjoyed that she’d decided to work herself to death. “That’s my family’s money, not mine.” She went back into her bedroom.

Whenever she says that, I always have this overwhelming urge to just yell, ‘Lara, you know how many people are left in your family? It’s a number that even I wouldn’t have trouble with: one!’. I couldn’t do that to her, though. It’s been years, but she’s still really cut up about her parents. So I just have to keep my big mouth shut on the whole money thing, even though it breaks my fucking heart watching her try and juggle top grades with three jobs.

I wandered into my bedroom and sat down on my bed. Before I had a shower, I thought I’d just quickly check Facebook to see if the guy who I’d just hooked up with had added me like he’d threatened to. While I lying on my back with my cell, stressing about that little red plus symbol, I noticed a sponsored advertisement thing pretending to be a status update on my newsfeed.

It was two guys –cute hipster-looking guys, I might add – hugging each other on a European streetscape with a huge party going on background. They were both grinning and pointing to their t-shirts which read, ‘It’s Better in Berlin’. Underneath them, there were flights advertised for eleven pounds. I double-checked that, it had to be without taxes. It actually turned out to be with taxes, as long as we didn’t have luggage.

I stared at my cell. Eleven pounds was something even Lara couldn’t argue with, and this was the last weekend she had free before she started her stupid new job. Before I could second-guess myself, I just bought us a couple of tickets for this aternoon. I wanted to take advantage of Lara’s new-found tolerance of night-clubs before she was too busy to join me in them. 

Lara had her door closed but I apparently have boundary issues so I just opened it. “Hey,” I said, swinging on the door frame. She was leaning on the windowsill and doing what she does best: brooding. She looked up at me. “Just so you know we’re going to Berlin this afternoon. Flight’s at four from Gatwick.”

I wouldn’t say she didn’t believe me, because she’s lived with me for years. She knows what I’m like. So instead of acting surprised, she just said at length, “Okay, why?”

“We haven’t been there together before?”

She was still staring. “That’s not really a good reason to go somewhere,” she pointed out. “There are a lot of places we haven’t been that we probably shouldn’t go to. North Korea, for example.”

I snorted. “Yeah, but Berlin will actually be fun,” I said. “And these days there’s a lot less human rights abuse in Germany than in North Korea.” I made puppy eyes at her. “Come on, Lara… you’ll love it. Berlin’s supposed to be a really awesome place to visit.”

“Sam!” she complained, making a face at me. My puppy eyes were clearly working on her. “I have a paper to write!”

“When do you not have a paper to write? You’re going to get old and die before you actually live!” I walked up to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Lara, as your best friend, I can’t let you spend the last free weekend you have not partying!”

“Don’t you think perhaps you might have spoken to me before booking those flights?”

Definitely not, because then she’d never have let me book them. I shook her. “Oh, my God. Do you need me to write a two thousand word essay on why you need to have fun sometimes for you to actually do it?”

I watched her face cycle through angry, worried and endeared before it finally settled on defeated. “Sam…” she said, and it sounded like sweet victory.

“Yes!” I said, fist-pumping. “It’s just overnight and we probably won’t sleep, so don’t bother packing or anything.” I practically skipped out the door to go take a shower, despite the fact my feet were killing me from the heels I’d been wearing all night. “I am so excited about this, you have no idea.”

“Oh, God, what am I doing…” I heard Lara mumble as I took off down the hallway. I grinned. She wasn’t going to know what hit her; I was going to make sure she had the best time.

The plane was Ryan Air so I was really surprised they didn’t actually sell standing room only tickets and charge us for oxygen. Lara’s magazine had vomit all over it – which she only discovered it by putting her hand right in it – and then we spent like twenty minutes waiting for the seatbelt light to go off so she could go wash it. When she came back, she had an expression that looked haunted.

“If you think the vomit is bad,” she said bleakly, “you should see what happened to the toilet.” She climbed over me and sat down. “You’d think two quid would buy you a toilet that didn’t look like it had been fighting for its life.”

That sounded like something that had to be filmed. While I was reviewing the horrifying footage, I did a dramatic reenactment of the Psycho shower scene music and had Lara in hysterics. There was one point where we were giggling so much neither of us could breathe, and the old guys in front of us looked over the chair and asked us if we were okay.

When we landed, Lara had already written a list of all the places she wanted to go, and she gave it to me to inspect. It had all the usual stuff I’d expect her to be into: the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz and what was left of the Berlin wall. I scribbled something on the other side of the paper and gave it back to her.

She turned it over, giving me this look, like ‘what?’ “It’s where I want to go,” I said, managing to keep a straight face.

She read it aloud. “’To get drunk ASAP’,” she chuckled. “Now there’s a plot twist.”

I let her drag me around to all the historic stuff and made at least a cursory attempt to take some good photos of us in front old buildings, but it was a huge relief when the sun finally went down.

I pointed at the sky. “You can’t argue with God,” I said. “It’s time for us to hit the cocktails.”

She made a pained noise. “You are incorrigible,” she said. “Fine, fine. Let’s get some tea and I’ll have a glass of wine with it.”

That sounded far too civilized for me, so when we sat down at some Italian place, I ordered the entire bottle. I also filled Lara’s glass to the brim. “No dessert until you finish your wine,” I told her, and then took a mouthful of mine and made a face. “What did I buy? This tastes like vinegar.” I checked the bottle. “But at least it’s more than twenty per cent.”

“That sounds like an American accent,” some guy said, and when I turned around it was the hottest blond on the planet. I wasn’t even sure he was actually real. His accent was a bit all over the place, though, and I couldn’t tell where he was from. 

“Well, I went to school in the states,” I said, while I was trying to figure his out.

He came over to stand at the edge of the table. His abs were so ripped I seriously think I could see them through his top. “I’m Jeremy,” he said, and shook hands with us both. “From Johannesburg.”

That explained it. I could never pick out South African accents. “Well, Jeremy from Johannesburg, you want to join Sam from Japan and Lara from England for some Italian food?”

“Sounds exotic,” he said, and called over two other Bachelors of the Year from where they’d been sitting. I’m not even exaggerating, they were all gorgeous. Even this guy without muscles had this kind of nerdy, bookish appeal. The toughest part was going to be choosing, unless I could somehow convince them to all join me in a park somewhere. Unfortunately, though, Lara would never go for that, even if she was reasonably happy to come with me to night clubs now.

I looked over at her. She was smiling sweetly and making polite conversation with the cute guy who was chatting to her, but I could tell she wasn’t that into it. Not that anyone was really Lara’s type – she was so picky – but if she did have a type, these guys eating with us would definitely not have been it. She didn’t do ‘conventional’. 

Me, on the other hand. “So, what do you do?” I asked Jeremy, eying his forearms which looked like something out of Mortal Kombat. I did conventional; I did everything.

“I’m a fireman,” he said, without missing a beat.

I didn’t believe him at all. “No way,” I told him. “Nice try, though.”

He laughed. “Okay, I’m an accountant. But that’s not sexy enough to get the ladies.”

I sat back in the chair so he could get a good look at my legs. “Maybe you’re wrong about that,” I said slowly and winked at him.

He glanced at his friends and somewhere in there, someone paid for our dinner.

Lara went off to the bathroom before we left the restaurant, and I followed her. “We won’t hang around with them all night,” I promised. “But a couple of hours can’t hurt, right?”

She looked skeptical. “Okay,” she said, after some thought. “After all, I did force you to do the history trail with me earlier. I know how much you hate it when I do that.”

I didn’t really hate it when she did anything, but yeah, history wasn’t my thing. There was something at least slightly endearing about watching her freak out over old monuments, though. It was definitely worth the space on my camera.

What was also worth that space was Lara’s face when we finally made it inside one of the boutique little nightclubs Berlin was famous for. She had been admiring it when the guy who had been chatting to her over dinner came right up against her and said, “Want to dance?”

She deadpanned. “No, sorry,” she said, and then at least managed to look a little apologetic before fleeing off to one of the booths in the corner.

Poor guy. I walked up to him. “Lara needs at least three more drinks before you’ll get a dance out of her,” I told him. “She’s really shy.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he told me, flashing a perfect smile and then making sure the next time he approached Lara he had an arm full of mixers.

Jeremy had been watching us. “Does the same go for you?” he asked.

I grinned at him and let it hang for a moment just to make him feel a teensy bit uncomfortable. “Nope,” I said. “I’m always ready.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said. I let him buy me a couple of shooters anyway before I went out onto the dance floor with him.

He was a lot taller than me. Don’t get me wrong, I like that. But it made dancing with him kind of difficult. “You’re tiny!” he yelled over the music, which is basically the first thing everyone I hook up with says about me.

“You saw my dinner,” I yelled back. “I’m working on it!”

He was actually a pretty crap dancer, but that wasn’t really what I was after from him, anyway. After a couple of songs I pretended to be tired and went and stood against a wall. I waited for him to come over and check on me, and then within the space of like a minute or two he had me pressed against the plasterboard and had somehow managed to bend down enough to kiss me. He was a pretty crap kisser, too, but I was too distracted by his rock solid abs to care much about what he was doing with his tongue. Yet, that is.

There was a knee edging its way between mine and normally the next step was always going for the boobs, but this guy was on fast forward. He actually lifted me up and sat me on his hips with the wall still at my back. I was wearing a skirt, so the hands supporting me were against my bare skin. When he leant into me this time, his waist was level with mine and I could feel how hard he was. I rolled my hips against it, watching his face and grinning at his reaction. He felt big. I braced a hand against the wall and kept going, grinding into him. He leant back from me to look down between us, and I flipped up my skirt so he could get a better look at the hot panties I had on while I rode the front of his jeans.

That sight actually made him groan. The hottest thing for me was always the point that a normal, intelligent guy fell apart in my hands and ended up begging me for it. From that sound he made, I could hear he was well on his way to that. I leaned up to his ear and whispered, “I’m going to make you come right here.” I put a hand down between us and ran in along the length of him. “Tell me how you want me to do that…”

He kissed down my neck. “I have a condom in my right pocket.”

I was busy trying to figure out the logistics of that when over Jeremy’s mountainous shoulder, I made eye contact with Lara. The guy she was talking to had his arm around her narrow shoulders. He didn’t seem to be actually trying anything, but she still looked really uncomfortable.

We watched each other for a few seconds, and then she closed her eyes and excused herself. I watched her go into the Women’s.

Fuck, I thought. She’s upset. Of course she’s upset, I’m about a minute and half away from screwing a really hot guy and there couldn’t be a worse possible time for her to need support. Fuck. Still, there was no way I was going to leave her in there by herself.

“Sorry to do this to you,” I said to Jeremy. “But I’m going to have to take a time out. Girl stuff.”

From his face, I could see for a moment that he didn’t believe me. From mine, he could see that I was serious. “You’re fucking kidding me,” he said, looking extremely frustrated. To his credit, he didn’t try to keep going or talk me out of it, he just put me back down on the ground.

“I’ll come back, I promise,” I told him, and then tried to surreptitiously adjust my underwear and follow Lara into the bathroom.

There was a serious imbalance of men to women in the club, and thank God because it meant the bathroom was empty.

Lara had washed her face and she was now staring at herself in the mirror. Brooding, of course.

“Hey,” I said, walking up to her. I didn’t ask her if she was having a good time, because I could clearly see she wasn’t.

“Hey,” she repeated, and then splashed more water on her face. Her cheeks always went kind of red when she was drinking. “I can see you’re having fun.”

I winced. “Yeah,” I said, and fanned myself. My cheeks were red for a completely different reason. “I’m pretty worked up, actually.”

She laughed once, but there was no humor in it at all. “I can see that, too.” She looked back at her reflection. “Sorry if I interrupted something.”

“You did actually,” I said. “But I don’t mind. Friends first, right?”

She nodded, but I saw her throat bob and her mouth tighten. When she splashed her face with water the third time, I realized she wasn’t doing it because she felt hot. She was crying.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” I said, walking straight up to her and putting a hand on her back. “No, don’t do that!”

She wiped her eyes hurriedly. “I’m okay. It’s stupid, I’ll get over it, just give me a minute.”

“Uh, you’re clearly not okay,” I pointed out, rubbing her back. “Did he, like, try something, or…?”

“No!” she said. “No, he’s nice. I just…” She shook her head, looking down in the sink this time. “I just thought this little trip was going to be about us. You know, two university students taking some silly impulse flight to Europe on the weekend.”

I frowned. “Isn’t that exactly what it is?”

This time, she looked up at me. There was emotion, there, in her eyes. “If I’d known it was just going to be another excuse for you to get drunk, shag guys and ignore me, I’d just have stayed home and been lonely somewhere actually comfortable.”

God, that broke my heart, and I felt awful. I couldn’t say anything straight away, because what do you say to that, really? It was true. I did ignore her when I was hooking up, which was kind of all the time.

She looked back down at the water again. “Like I said, just give me a minute. I just had another two shots so any second now I won’t care about anything and I’ll be fun again.”

I made her stand up so I could put my arms around her and give her the biggest hug. “I suck,” was all I said. “You don’t need to be ‘more fun’, I need to be less of a terrible friend.”

She leaned her head against mine so our ears were touching. Her skin was warm. “Well, it’s a bit too late to decide that, I already drank them.” She pulled away, even though I would have preferred to stay hugging her a little longer. “Go on,” she said. “Go shag Jeremy.”

Yeah, ‘shagging’ Jeremy wasn’t looking that hot right then. Not after what had just happened. “Jeremy can wait,” I said, taking her hand. “I need to spend some time with my best friend.”

The smile she gave me… like, wow. You don’t get a smile like that from Lara that often. I blamed it on the alcohol and the fact I was already really worked up, but yeah. She was pretty.

When we came out of the bathroom, the three South Africans were waiting for us by the door. “Uh, hi?” I said to them, and then gestured to the women’s bathroom. “All yours.”

They laughed, and Jeremy was trying really hard to hide the bulge in his jeans. It was kind of hot looking at and knowing it was there because he wanted it in me, but I had to not think about that now. Now, I was going to spend time with Lara.

Unfortunately, he already had plans. “Where were we?” he said, taking a step towards me.

Man, I wanted back on that. I was so ready for it. But I still had Lara’s hand and when I looked at her face, there was no way I was going to ditch her again, no matter how horny I was. “Lara and I are just going to dance for a bit,” I said. She shot me that gorgeous smile again.

“Dance how?” he asked, and his grin was as big as the contents of his boxers.

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t blame him, though. I was feeling the whole unfinished business thing, too.

“We have so not had enough drinks for that,” I told him, and led Lara out onto the dance floor. There were a few more people on it now and there wasn’t much space. That was actually for the best, because Lara can’t really dance anyway and it’s harder to tell when there’s no room. She knew it and was less self-conscious.

It’s actually so cute when she tries to dance. She’ll move her feet a bit and put her hands up and sort of bop along in time to the music, but she comes across as really uncoordinated. It’s not actually the case, she’s just really self-conscious and it makes her stiff. Like, she could do all sorts of twisty bendy yoga poses, but when there were people around she couldn’t dance to save herself. I wasn’t paying much attention to her moves, though, because she was wearing a white top. It was pretty hot on the floor it wasn’t long before it was a little bit transparent. Luckily she couldn’t tell, although maybe she would have been too drunk to care. It wasn’t something I’d normally notice, really, but for some reason I did. The shapes underneath it were kind of hot.

That was a seriously weird thought, and I didn’t really know where it had come from. I felt uncomfortable about it for a bit, and was fortunately distracted by the boys coming to dance with us. Jeremy hadn’t sorted his big problem out at all, and when he danced up against my back, I could feel it and it got me all hot again.

The boys had obviously devised a plan of action and were hunting in a pack, now, because the guy who’s been chatting up Lara was behind her, too.

Before I knew it, they’d pressed us together. Lara was laughing; obviously the alcohol had finally got to her because she just threw her arms around me to stop herself from falling over and giggled in my neck. It was right on the sensitive part. The boys were pressing our hips together, too, so I was in this really awkward position of having some guy totally hard up against my ass and my best friend pressed against my front.

The worst part was that it was a fucking turn on.

I kind of just stood there for a few seconds, because I didn’t know what to do about it. Well, I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to pull Lara’s top over her head and throw it somewhere and push her back against the booth behind us. She had beautiful skin and her boobs we just looking so inviting right then that I wanted it all in my mouth. I could kiss all the way down her body while Jeremy finally gave it to me from behind.

While I was thinking that, Jeremy let me move a little away from her, and I wasn’t sure why. At least, I wasn’t sure until I felt his hand slip between my thighs. Lara was still dancing and laughing; she hadn’t noticed. She didn’t even notice when he put it inside my panties and I think I just about had an aneurism.

“You two are hot,” he was saying in my ear. “You should kiss.”

Oh, God. We should not kiss right now, I thought at exactly the same time as the rest of me was like, ‘YES, DO IT DO IT’. “That’s not a great idea…” I managed to say. “We’re been friends forever.”

Lara was still laughing, and she still had her arms around me. She was obviously still under the impression we were all just harmlessly dancing and the boys were being overconfident. I tried to lean away from Lara so she’d never find out what was going on, but in the process I just pressed more firmly against Jeremy which only encouraged him.

“Samantha Nishimura turning down a kiss,” Lara said, slurring her words a little. “There’s something I never thought I’d hear.” The boys then started chanting for us to do it, and just as Jeremy was getting pretty close to finishing me off, Lara surprised the hell out of me by actually swinging in and pressing her lips against mine.

You know you have those moments when time slows down and you’re hyper aware of everything that’s going on around you? Yeah. I was just so close… Jeremy wasn’t letting up on me, either. If anything, he actually made it more intense when Lara leaned in. Not that I could really focus on what was happening between my legs when I could feel and taste every nuance of Lara’s lips. She tasted like vodka and we all smelt like cigarettes and I was kissing her, feeling the blade of her tongue between my lips, taking her lips gently between my teeth and then opening my mouth right up and just completely letting her in…and oh my God this is my best friend I’m kissing. My female best friend. It was Lara, and I was totally about to come while she had her tongue in my mouth and I imagined all the other places it could be.

I’m not usually one to flip out, especially not over sex, but this was fifty shades of way too much.

I pulled away from both of them. “Yeah,” I said, really leaning into the word, “I’m going to take five.”

I took Lara’s hand, too, because she was really drunk and I wasn’t leaving her alone with three horny guys even if they hadn’t shown any sign of being creeps.

We actually ended up sneaking out without the boys, because Lara couldn’t stop laughing and I didn’t trust myself to not end up in exactly the same position I’d vacated before.

We arranged a hotel room and Lara just lay down on the big double bed and made blanket-angels with her arms and legs. “This is so comfortable,” she said. “Wow, I feel really good.”

I left Lara there for a few minutes and went to pull her trick of brooding in the bathroom and staring at my reflection. I was still flushed, and if I was honest with myself, I was still horny. I’d just have to deal, though, because the shower looked pretty flimsy and masturbating in the same bed as my friend was only a step up from coming while I was kissing her.

When I thought I’d calmed down enough to be in the same room as her, I went back in there. She’d changed into one of the t-shirts we’d bought earlier that day, and was otherwise only wearing panties. Not that Lara wears lacey ones or anything, but seeing the shape of her ass at the top of her thighs totally wrecked the Zen I’d tried so hard to find.

She turned around, laughed and flopped back on the bed again and promptly fell asleep. I would have thought it was incredibly cute if I wasn’t stressing about the fact I was finding it incredible cute.

The following morning Lara woke me up by scooting over under the blankets and putting her arms around me. We’d snuggled in bed before; in fact, we’d done it for months after her parents went missing. It was different this time, though.

She was silent for a while, but I could feel her eyes were open. “We kissed last night, didn’t we?”

I squinted. “Yeah.”

For a second I thought she might freak out, but she just laughed once. “Hah! And you said I wasn’t any fun. I can be fun!”

“Mmm.” I didn’t want to talk to that point. At all. I didn’t even want to think about it. Unfortunately, I did anyway. “You were actually a much better kisser than Jeremy.”

She looked smug. “I’m getting that printed on a t-shirt, too.” She rolled over and pressed the ‘It’s Better in Berlin’ text flat against her boobs so she could read it. Why the hell was I noticing them? I wasn’t horny anymore, I was just hungover. “Although on second thoughts, perhaps not. I probably can’t fit anything else in my backpack, and I’m sure Ryan Air would just love to charge me several thousand quid for checking in baggage at the last minute.”

I actually wished there hadn’t been room for that Berlin t-shirt, too, because she wore it to bed on and off for two years after. Every time I’d see it I’d remember that kiss. To make everything a million times worse, the text sat at perfect boob-height like a big, neon light saying, ‘Look at us!’.

It was one of the things we lost in the shipwreck on Yamatai.

Maybe it’s time we replaced it.


End file.
